Myanmar refugees remain fearful as fighting escalates

AP, LAIZA, Myanmar

Ethnic Kachins living in makeshift camps in Myanmar described their terror at the army’s use of air power during fighting with Kachin rebels seeking greater autonomy, as the government said it has exercised maximum restraint.

The escalation of attacks has made the lives of a claimed 100,000 Kachin displaced since fighting began more than 19 months ago even more perilous. Many are in camps in or near Laiza, the guerrilla-held town by the border with China.

“We are really afraid and can’t sleep well at nights,” said Dashi Lu, 60, from Daw Hpun Yang Village, about a day’s walk from the Laiza camp where she has lived for a year. “If I were small enough, I would hide under a leaf,” she said on Friday.

The Burmese government said in a statement on Friday that the army had been given orders to cease all offensives against Kachin Independence Army (KIA) guerrillas, but that it had to protect its soldiers after the Kachin continued to set off landmines and ambush government forces.

The Kachin, like Myanmar’s other ethnic minorities, have long sought greater autonomy from the central government. They are the only major ethnic rebel group that has not reached a ceasefire agreement with Burmese President Thein Sein’s reformist government, which came to power in 2011 after almost five decades of military rule.

More than 19 months of fighting between the two sides escalated on Christmas Day last year, when the rebels rejected a government demand that supply convoys be allowed to reach an army base, contending that they carried ammunition that could be used to attack their nearby headquarters.

The government then used fighter planes and helicopters to mount attacks and seized one of the guerrillas’ hilltop outposts.

“Now, there is intense fighting in the vicinity of the camps and everyone is fearful,” said Salang Kaba Doi Pyi Sa, head of the Kachin’s refugee relief committee. “If the army uses heavy artillery, it can reach the camps.”

Dashi Lu, the displaced villager, said that for safety’s sake, she had already a year ago fled the village home in which she had lived all her life, along with her daughter-in-law and two grandchildren. Her son is with the guerrillas and she has not heard from him for three months.

“I thought we were safe, but these days the military bombardments make us very fearful,” she said. “There’s no place for us to run to again.”

The government said in the statement that because the guerrillas would not let the convoys through, it “had to take military action in self-defense” and in order to ensure the safety and protect the property of the people of the region.

It added that the military had exercised “maximum restraint” in the use of force. It also said the positions from which the military dislodged the Kachin were in uninhabited territory.

Fighting initially erupted in June 2011 after the KIA refused to abandon a strategic base near a hydropower plant that is a joint venture with a Chinese company.

The Kachin have been reaching out for help from the international community.

A network of Kachin support groups on Thursday sent a letter to the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross, asking it to take action against the “daily escalation of attacks” by the army and to protect Kachin civilians.

It claimed the government was utilizing Chinese airspace for its offensive, and that the Kachin could not flee to safety because China had closed the border to them, while Myanmar’s government blocked relief assistance.